Health Care Costs Ex-Insurance

At the beginning of this year, I decided to keep a running list of what I would have to pay for all of my health-care-related expenses if I didn’t have insurance. That’s the retail sticker price. So far, the tally has been pretty enlightening, as itemized below... the biggest expense was actual my very generic Rx.

Retail for my Generic Rx $59.99 x 12 months = $719.88
OverTheCounter Meds = $42
Contacts = $114
Annual OB/GYN visit = $180
Dermatology Screening *EST* $175
Dermatology – Routine Removal *EST* $450
Dental Exam - *EST* $150
Dental Cleaning - *EST* $140
TOTAL Year To-Date: Closing in on ~ $2000

Interesting A-Ha's about COBRA

Couple new fun facts I learned about COBRA, in case you’re leaving a company soon… either by choice or not so much by choice.

1.My healthcare benefits are terminated on the last day of the month in which I terminate my employment. I was originally thinking about my last day at work being July 31st, but then I realized that if I worked one more day (August 3rd), I would then have healthcare for the remainder of August. (This was relevant to my Blue Cross Blue Shield healthplan, and I’m definitely not sure that this applies everywhere).

2.The second item does apply everywhere because it’s new legislation just implemented by Obama. Apparently, you can elect COBRA retroactively, up to two months after you terminate employment. So, I can basically not pay for healthcare for the month of August… but if I break my leg, I can go to the hospital and say “I need to elect COBRA to pay for this!” The whole impetus behind the new legislation is making coverage easier for people that are in transition. Awesome, real world implications benefitting me from having all of that hope in the Oval Office.

Blog Poll: What is Sicker?

I recently netflix’d Sicko and was highly entertained by Michael Moore’s playful rant. It is amazing that what seems normal to us, is pretty off-kilter by the rest of the world’s standards. And no matter how one-sided people say Moore’s films are – you can’t argue with facts like these: the United States health care system ranks 37th, just ahead of Slovenia and Cuba. Then this weekend, I attended a Financial Aid Information Session at Harvard Business School… once the brief slides were scrolled through and the floor was opened for Q&A, the first three questions were not about financial aid or about the loan terms or interest rates or about the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt those of us in the room would be taking on – the first three questions were about health care. It’s clear what makes us most panicked in this country is not debt, but health care.

So yes, what’s sicker… panic among reasonably well-to-do prospective MBA’s over student health care and the exact day it begins and what it includes… or the fact that I will have to take on a minimum of $98,000 in loans to attend school this fall. ARE YOU SERIOUS??? But that’s the base loan package – i.e. what the poorest of candidates would be expected to take on. Insane.

The "Why" Behind Expensive Health Care

I wanted to do a series about how much health care costs (i.e. literally answering the “what” for all of these services), but the more I researched, the more I found answers to a different question, the “why.” As in “Why does U.S. health care cost so much?”

The variations in how much health care costs in various nations are mostly explained by G.D.P. per capita. And everything else is being attributed to:

1. Simply higher prices for the same thing
2. Higher admin/overheard costs
3. More widespread use of high tech equipment
4. More defensive medicine and tests to fend off malpractice suits

I wonder if any of Obama’s universal health care plans are addressing any of these specific issues or if universalizing will simply being evening the playing field for lower income families who can’t even get the baseline of care being offered in the U.S. I will be interested to learn more.

To my original question of how much health care costs… does anyone have ideas for good resources on where to find better itemization of what things cost?

In the meantime, I'm doing a pretty good job of noting Rx costs on my recipts (that little line that tells you how much your insurance saved you....)

Read more in-depth in this great Economix article from Nov. 14 NYTimes

Huh?

After my confusion on open enrollment in health care benefits a few weeks ago, I introduced some clarity (and some more confusion) after my most recent visit to Walgreen’s to pick up my Rx. Because of the money in my company health care account and how it’s set up, I usually pick up my Rx and it automatically deducts from this money, and I am charged $0. The confusion I referenced before was about what happens after that money runs out. According to the policy, I pay “full sticker” for health care up to my deductible, and then I move to a co-pay. It's not that hard to understand. I guess my confusion is tied to my unfamiliarity with what “full sticker” health care even costs.

Well, I finally ran the well dry on the company funded health care spending account, and was a little shocked to receive the total of $24 for my two prescriptions. One Rx rang up as $.53. The second (my usual monthly prescription which I thought was around $50 “full sticker”) rang up as $23. What? Now $24 is not a lot for a Rx by any means, which is great, but just plain confusing.

But what is clear is that for the last two months of this year (before my health care spending account addition for 2008 kicks in), I need to budget for Rx expenses. I know universal health care is only one of the issues on the plate of president-elect Obama - and we may not get there in one year or one term - 'but we will get there.'